The Velvet Underground's John Cale Just Reinvented Himself

John Cale does not laugh. Not at the mention of the farfetched twaddle doled out by Donald Trump; not by the new, unauthorized, and downright defamatory biography of old band mate Lou Reed; not even the sputtering last days of the record industry as we know it. He's not interested in current movements. After all, Cale, along with Reed, co-founded the defy-everything band The Velvet Underground. He produced the debuts of Patti Smith and The Stooges and, as a solo artist, recorded some of the most gorgeous, unnerving, and under-appreciated rock music of the past four decades.

And today, Cale crosses boundaries once more with a 'new' release, out today. This twofer consists of Cale's 1982 album Music For A New Society and its newly-rejiggered replicate titled M:FANS. The original is spooky enough, with songs about geopolitical dread, romantic anomie and generalized alienation. But M:FANS outstrips the original. Cale has added layers of discordant noise, doomy drums, shards of jagged guitar and pounding synths. Cale, dour but professorially exact, sheds some light on the proceedings.

I start by asking him how such an unusual release—original record plus its surgically-altered evil twin—came about. "People are always coming up to me after gigs and asking me about the original album: 'When are you going to rerelease it?'" he replies, his deep, rolling voice betraying a faint Welsh inflection. "There's a vogue for this sort of thing, you know, with different artists. I got a request from Denmark, 'Can you come and do Music For A New Society?' That sort of triggered it. And it was a great place to start, to see what kind of arrangements we could come up with for another version. We added strings and we added voices for the performance. And that gave me the idea that it might be a good idea to revisit the whole thing and have the old and new side by side."

Are you disappointed by the original? Is this a way of setting things straight?

"No, no, no," he replies. "The point was to take the strength of the original, which is kind of harrowing, but clearly had moments of strength that would work in a different context. You had something to build on there. There are a lot of ideas from the original that really work nowadays. There's still some of the strength."

Then there's the Lou Reed question. In the album's press release, Cale is quoted as saying, "Losing Lou (too painful to understand) forced me to upend the entire recording process and begin again....a different perspective." I ask him about how much of an impact Reed's death had on both his life and the recording of the new Music.

"It happened during the recording of the new version. I felt like working on M:FANS was putting a ribbon around Lou's death and wrapping it all together. I did a video for the song 'If You Were Still Around,' which I like to think is a respectful nod to Lou. But the lyrics were written by Sam Shepard, so maybe I'm just inferring that."

I mention to Cale that his and Reed's 1990 collaboration Songs For Drella, their tribute to Andy Warhol, was extraordinary. Did they ever discuss working together again, as a duo, after that album and series of dates?

Before I go, it must be asked of a man who has been making records since The Beatles began if he views the end of the music business with any sadness, humor, or distaste. What are his predictions for the future of music and musicians?

"There are too many young people doing the kinds of things they want to do, musically, you know?" he says. "The business may end, but it's not going to end the way you think it will. There's so much activity going on all over the world, and people are sharing it. People may try to crimp it. But it only makes artists more angry and work harder."

But what of file sharing, streaming and musicians not being able to get paid. Certainly that must anger you?

"No, not really," he replies. "All that has done is driven people into live performance. Which is a good thing."

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